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Abstract

Research question:

Post-traumatic stress disorders among children in Kirkuk in Northern Iraq—How does the war and post conflict affect the children’s academic learning at school?

This is the main research question for this thesis. Kirkuk is well known as the oil city in Iraq. The original history of the city goes back to 2400 BC, when the city was the capital of the kingdom of Gutium. Gutium was also the name of the Kurdish people at the time. Kirkuk has been a conflict area throughout history with a current population of about 902,019 (2007) comprised of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens. The non-ending conflict is about whether Kirkuk is Kurdish, Arabic, or Turkmens.

The main purpose of this research is to encourage a greater understanding of how traumatic experience affects school children and their learning. The focus will be specific traumatic experiences connected to war and conflict areas, with Kirkuk as the research stage.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how PTSD affects academic learning among children. Learning and PTSD theories have been presented, followed by interpretation and reflection and analysis, in order to be able to respond to the theme.

Methodology/ Literature

The methodology in this thesis is case study, based on relevant theories and qualitative in depth interviews. The reason I chose this method is that the qualitative method focuses on a few devices, provides a broad description, and says “a lot of little,” and this thesis may later lead to a boarder research based on quantitative researches. Also, because PTSD affects individuals in different ways, I therefore find it interesting to base research on case studies. The respondents’ interview results are analyzed and studied carefully based on the theories and some existing previous researches. The findings have been both presented as case stories during chapter five and analyzed during chapter six.

Both older and newer literatures have been used to discuss the theme. Dale H. Schunk’s (2008) relevance learning theories have been presented among them; Bandura’s social cognitive learning, conditioning theories, cognitive information processing theories and further PTSD theories have been presented with focus on DSM-IV. The focus has been on discussing how experiences lead to changes and what that means for learning. I have also used two previous researches; one survey done by Brit Oppedal, Karoline B. Seglem, and Laila Jensen (2009), a survey of young refugees in Norway about traumatic experience and its effect, and Broberg, Dyregrov and Lilled (2005), who researched on individuals exposed to a fair accident in Sweden. They linked school dropout with the trauma event.

Further, I have presented Horowitz’s (1986) theory of stress response that was one of the earliest theories in this area. The theory focused on the fact that the traumatic experience shook the individual’s personality.

Results/main conclusions:

Learning is a result of experiences that lead to change and further lead to permanent changes in behaviour. PTSD theories have shown that trauma events change behaviour in individuals and in many cases lead to disorders. However, not all trauma experiences will lead to chronic PTSD. It depends on the degree of the trauma event, age, environment, and whether the trauma is repeated. Horowitz, in his theory of stress responses, focused on the fact that the traumatized individual swung between two extremes: between the need to slide away to protect themselves against being overwhelmed by the traumatic memories and the need to get an opportunity to express and work through the experience.

The main findings in this thesis are that trauma experiences may lead to disorders, such as flashbacks, nightmares, and arousal. Newer researches have shown a correlation between trauma experiences and learning difficulties, and they refer to the fact that individuals that suffer from trauma events are disturbed by nightmares and flashbacks; as a result of that, they develop sleeping difficulties that result in concentration problems during the day.

The respondents that have been presented individually as case stories during chapter five all indicate a form of suffering from trauma events, and it also has been linked to their academic learning. Two of the three respondents had to drop out of school the year they were exposed to the trauma event and still struggle with schoolwork. All three respondents explain that they have difficulties concentrating and suffer from flashbacks.

The main conclusion here is that, based on the theories that have been presented and the research results in this thesis, PTSD may lead to learning difficulties on the basis of various factors, and it is necessary for clinic help to be provided to stop the development of chronic PTSD.

Further research that focuses on the relationship between PTSD and learning is important to develop good clinical support tools for children and to assist them at an early age so that they do not grow up with the trauma disorders. Trauma experiences, like other experiences, change the individual’s personality. That may lead to learning difficulties, lower confidence, and the individual forming a negative image of their life and their environment. I hope this thesis leads to further research on the theme.